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Thursday, May 06, 2004

Just finished watching the final episode of Friends. *sigh* Truly the end of an era. I remember when it first premiered in 1994. I was 17, starting my final year of high school, and I refused to watch Friends cuz it looked so stupid. Then, one fateful night, there was nothing on, I watched it, and I got hooked. Everyone I knew in university watched it religiously and we'd always gather in floor lounges on Thursdays to watch it. And then, I made supervisor at Extra Foods and stopped watching it because I was working a lot of evenings. When I finally got an evening off, I watched it, and realized, "I don't care about these characters anymore." Watched it sporadically ever since.

For those who missed the final episode, there were no big surprises. Ross and Rachel finally got back together, but they did fall back on the old cliche of "rushing to the airport to tell your true love how you feel before he/she leaves forever." But it was nice. It left a warm feeling inside me. And on Tuesday, I'll be able to buy it on DVD!

My favourite final episode of a show, though, will always be the final Quantum Leap. I mean, that final episode fucked me up. I spent weeks afterwards pondering the final fate of Dr. Sam Beckett. And now, we know. He got thrown into the future, where he now commands the starship Enterprise!

What else is going on in the news.... A unique marketing campaign is underway for the documentary Supersize Me. I'm sure we've all heard about it by now. This is the film about the guy who ate nothing but McDonald's food for a month and it just about killed him. Anyway, as part of the whole campaign for the film, McDonald's employees will get $3 off admission to the film. All they have to do is present their employee ID. Plus, newspaper ads will feature this quote from McDonald's spokesperson: "Two Thumbs Down!"

Yup, McDonald's is going into full spin mode trying to defend themselves. McDonald's new allegations about the film are that the guy's health went down so quickly because he did no exercise in his month and, what you don't see in the film, is ALL the between meal snacks he ate. So, between no exercise and all those snacks, no wonder! The writer/director/star Morgan Spurlock tells us that, true, he didn't exercise that much, but it's an outright lie that he had all those between meal snacks.

And also, I have to mention this. There's a controversy about some of the advertising for Spider-Man 2. Sony Pictures signed a deal with Major League Baseball that was going to have Spider-Man 2 ads on the bases at major league ball games! Yup. Home plate was going to be changed from its regular white to a trademarkt Spider-Man red-and-black webbing pattern with "Spider-Man 2" emblazoned across it. Anyway, baseball purists complained quite loudly about this and MLB has axed the deal.

Next Issue...Oh! Friends: the show is ending. I thought you meant the whole concept of having friends was ending.